Archives for April, 2014

Two recentish entries into the growing field of graphic novel scientific biographies, both very good, both suitable for a wide audience: Darwin: A Graphic Biography by Eugene Byrne and Simon Gurr and Mind Afire: The Visions of Tesla by Abigail Samoun and Elizabeth Haidle. If I had to count one of these a little bit…

I’m always interested in the present and future of libraries. There’s a steady stream of reports from various organizations that are broadly relevant to the (mostly academic) library biz but they can be tough to keep track of. I thought I’d aggregate some of those here. Of course I’ve very likely missed a few, so…

Publishing may be a button, but publishing isn’t all we need The Vacuum Shouts Back: Postpublication Peer Review on Social Media bioRxiv: The preprint server for biology Debt, Pensions and Capitalisation: Funding schol comms innovation How to maximise usage of digital collections Librarian, Heal Thyself: A Scholarly Communication Analysis of LIS Journals How to energize…

Up to Here With Trolls? This Is What It’s Like To Be a Woman at a Bitcoin Meet-up An Open Letter to Brogrammers So You’ve Got Yourself a Policy. Now What? Technology’s Man Problem Why the ‘Open’ Internet Is So Closed to Women The Brutal Ageism of Tech Years of experience, plenty of talent, completely…

As part of the celebrations for Canada’s upcomming 150th birthday, the Canadian federal government has released its Digital Canada 150 strategy paper, and while it`s not all bad, at the same time there is not an awful lot to recommend it. Especially considering it was four years in the making. My sense is that its…

Oh, Cracked, you are so funny. So funny it just really hurts sometimes. And these so definitely apply to the pickle that libraries and other cultural/content institutions and industries find themselves in as we try and find our place in a future that is very different from the past. 5 Reasons The Future Will Be…

Yesterday was April Fools’ Day, a day I enjoy immensely. I even contribute to the fun every now and then. This year the crop among the science/scholcomm/library community seemed especially strong so I thought I’d share. Science, Nature Team Up on New Journal / Science PeerJ now requires authors to deposit ‘selfies’ in a data…

Added: Please note the date this post was published on. After a couple of years of implementing some really amazing and progressive change at Elsevier, I’ve decided to refocus some of my advisory efforts over the next few years. As a result, I’ll be taking on a senior advisory role for the Government of Canada.…